Kategori: Flickr Commons

Oscar II, King of Sweden and Norway, at Rosendal Castle in Stockholm in 1904

In 2015, a small collection of stereographs was given to the archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board by a donor from the USA, through the intermediary of the National Maritime Museums in Sweden.

Stereographs (also called stereograms, stereo views or stereo cards) are two almost identical photographs mounted on cardboard, which appear three-dimensional viewed through a stereoscope. The method of stereoscopy was initially invented in 1838 by the English scientist and inventor Charles Wheatstone, and became popular in the 1860s, until about 1910.

The stereographs are from two different publishers in the USA. The card with King Oscar II is produced by the Underwood & Underwood stereographic company, founded in 1881 in Ottawa, Kansas, USA. The company was one of the world’s major publisher of stereographs, once publishing millions of cards a year.

All the other cards are produced by Gust. A. Johnson, Winburne, PA. Gustav Adolph Johnson (1864-1950) was born in Grubbetorp, Brålanda parish in the province of Dalsland, north of Vänersborg town in western Sweden. He immigrated to the USA in 1886, and settled in Winburne, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a miner until 1888, when he started a printing office. In 1901 he travelled in Sweden, collecting about 3,500 photographs which he used as stereographs.

In March 2012, the Swedish National Heritage Board published the Berit Wallenberg Collection on The Commons on Flickr, with photos by the Swedish archaeologist and art historian Berit Wallenberg (1902-1995). During the coming months, we will show some more of her images from Sweden, Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, England and Denmark, with new images uploaded every week. Most of them will be from the 1920s and 1930s, a few from the 1940s and 1950s. (Sorry about The Netherlands, Norway and Iceland, but due to a lack of suitable images, these Albums will not be continued.)

Building by a canal in Bruges, Belgium. Photo: Berit Wallenberg, 1934

When Berit Wallenberg travelled in Sweden and other countries in Western Europe she frequently used her camera. The photos mainly reflect her studies of churches, ancient monuments and historical buildings and environments – the main reason for her travels – but now and then they have a more personal touch, showing people and other objects.

We are very pleased that about 17 % of the 221 photos by Berit Wallenberg we uploaded on Flickr Commons in 2012-2013, have had new and valuable information added by contributing and clever Flickr members, thus helping us improve the photos’ data in the Board’s photo database online, Kulturmiljöbild. Buildings were identified, images were located more closely, and other interesting information was given. Actually, that is one of the main reasons why we wanted to try Flickr Commons in the very beginning…

Girl with dog at the shore of lake Satisjaure (Satihaure) in Lapland. Photo: Björn Allard, 1958.

Would you like to view breath-taking landscapes in Lapland, Swedish archaeologists at work in loamy pits in the woods of Ångermanland, Swedes about to go hunting elk in Jämtland, and other motifs from central and northern Sweden?

Then you should follow the photostream of the Swedish National Heritage Board on Flickr Commons during spring, and have a look now and then in the “Björn Allard” album. We will share a choice of colour images by the Swedish photographer Björn Allard, employed at the Swedish National Heritage Board in the 1950s and 1960s.

Björn Allard (1923-2006) took part in the Board’s archaeological surveys and excavations to contribute documentary photographs. An important part of his work was to document at the Board’s culture-historical surveys and archaeological excavations in northern Sweden, due to the regulations of Swedish lakes and rivers when new power plants were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Lake Satisjaure (Satihaure) in Lapland. Today is the area part of Laponia, a UNESCO World Heritage. Photo: Björn Allard, 1958

The images we will show on Flickr Commons are all in colour, chosen from about 450 colour slides by Björn Allard, which are digitized for the Swedish National Heritage Board’s photo database online Kulturmiljöbild. A lot more images in black and white by Björn Allard are held in our archives, most of them in the Board’s reports from the surveys at the lake regulations.

Five Swedish provinces will be represented in the new album. From north to south: Lapland (Lappland), Ångermanland, Jämtland, Dalecarlia (Dalarna), Östergötland and Västergötland. The images will be uploaded in this order, province by province.

The images are taken between 1957 and 1963. They show landscapes, cultural environments in the countryside and archaeologists from the Swedish National Heritage Board at field work. Locals in northern Sweden, at work or at leisure, will appear now and then. The area around lake Satisjaure (Satihaure) in Lapland, shown in the initial images of the album, is today part of Laponia, a world heritage listed by UNESCO.

We hope you will enjoy the images. Welcome to view, comment, tag and share!

Our album on Flickr Commons called “Old churches” was launched in September 2009. We will now let the album grow, with even more images of churches and their environments from all over Sweden, some 100 years ago or more.

The album reflects one of the largest photo collections in the archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board, with about 140.000 photos of Swedish churches, taken from ca 1860 to 1975. Until the 1990s, the Swedish National Heritage Board was responsible for supervising the care and maintain of the Swedish church buildings (the task was then transferred to the County Administrative Boards). That is the reason why we have so many of these images in our holdings.

The images in the album show Swedish churches from about 1100-1900 AD from all parts of the country – stone and wooden churches of different shapes, cathedrals and chapels, country churches as well as city churches. They also show the surrounding rural or urban environments, and sometimes you will notice men, women and children from times gone by.

Three years have passed since the Swedish National Heritage Board presented Fredrik Bruno and his 1940s colour photographs on Flickr Commons. Since the images have been largely appreciated, we thought it would be nice to renew the acquaintance and show some more of these photos from different towns around Sweden (and some from the countryside), taken with either Kodachrome or Agfacolor diapositive film. Being a professional town engineer, Fredrik Bruno obviously focused on urban motifs. A lot of the photos might even be from travels he made in his service.

Some of the photos we show have a link in the field of information to a recent photo in our photo database, showing exactly the same view, but in 2010-2011. These comparative photos were taken within a project at the Swedish National Heritage Board, with the purpose to illustrate changes in the urban environment over time.

The first photo uploaded on Flickr Commons by the Swedish National Heritage Board, in March 2009. Stockholm, Sweden. View from Hammarby lake towards Danviken and the mill Klippan (the Rock). Photo: Carl Curman, c. 1890

The Swedish National Heritage Board is celebrating 5 rewarding years on The Commons on Flickr, where we show and share old copyright free images since March 17th, 2009. Until today, 1.325 images have been uploaded to our photostream, arranged in 24 picture sets and five picture collections reflecting our large public collections of photos and other kinds of images. Since 2009, the initial Flickr Commons project has turned into regular activities at the Board, owing to its success.

Our images on The Commons have been viewed more than 6.5 million times so far. Many of them have reached those who might be most interested, as Carl Curman’s photographs from Spain in 1878, which have been much appreciated by our Spanish followers (and by many others too). The images from Spain were also the subject of an article in the Spanish web journal El País in 2010.

People from more than 70 countries have viewed the images. About 4.500 Flickr community members are our special contacts on Flickr, always updated on our recently uploaded images – as we are updated on theirs!

Bromma Airport near Stockholm city, Sweden. We learned about the aircraft (Douglas DC-4 and DC-3) from several initiated Flickr users who helped us improve the image’s information in our photo database. Photo: Fredrik Bruno, 1947

10 % of the images have had new information added in comments and tags by Flickr members, helping us improve the images’ data in our photo database online – Kulturmiljöbild. Entire images, buildings, places, streets and other objects have been located and identified by committed users (and sometimes via blogs, web media or Twitter). Many viewers have found more images in our photo database through a persistent link at each image on The Commons to the image in the database.

We want to thank all you viewers and followers of our photostream and all you Flickr members who have contributed useful and interesting new information. Thank you for viewing, appreciating, tagging, commenting, discussing, adding knowledge and comparative recent photos in comments and much, much more. Thank you for sharing and using our images in so many different and creative ways!

We are indeed grateful to Flickr and to the Library of Congress for the initiative to create The Commons in 2008, giving cultural heritage institutions as ours this great opportunity. Our experience as a government agency is that a photo sharing web site like Flickr is a splendid way to reach out with your public collections, allowing them to be of both use and enjoyment in society.

This street (Västra Storgatan) in Nyköping, Sweden, was located by a Flickr user, who also told that the building is no longer there, but replaced by a new one. We added the information to our photo database. Photo: Berit Wallenberg, 1928

Starting today, the Swedish National Heritage Board invites you to enjoy a choice of photographs by the Swedish botanist and landscape historian Mårten Sjöbeck, which we will upload to a new picture set on Flickr Commons during spring. The images, which are from the 1920s to about 1960, show landscapes and cultural environments, towns, buildings and ancient monuments, but also people and their domestic animals. Many of the images are of special value and importance as a documentation of the vanishing ancient agricultural landscape, mostly in the southern and central parts of Sweden.

Mårten Sjöbeck (1886-1976) lived in the province of Skåne (Scania) in southern Sweden, for instance in Helsingborg town. For economic reasons, he had to break off his studies in botany and geography at Lund University, and in 1909, he was employed at the Swedish State Railways as a clerc and later as Head of Division. He was commissioned by the State Railways to write about different Swedish provinces in a series of travel guide books, illustrated with his own photographs.

Alongside his employment at the State Railways, Mårten Sjöbeck continued his scientific work. He was a pioneer in his theories about how thousands of years of human activities, as cultivation and pasturage, have shaped and developed the landscape. His research laid the foundation for landscape history as a field of science in Sweden, and he also had modern ideas about landscape preservation. In 1950, he received an honorary doctorate at Lund University, and he has been called ”the Linnaeus of Skåne” after the Swedish 18th century botanist Carl von Linné.

The archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board hold cirka 7.000 of Mårten Sjöbeck’s photographs. About 470 are digitized to the Board’s photo database online, ”Kulturmiljöbild”, and a choice of them will now appear on Flickr Commons. Mårten Sjöbeck had a sensitive eye for his motif, except for a great knowledge about what he chose to depict, why many of his images are of a rare photographic quality and beauty. Welcome to the world of Mårten Sjöbeck!

Did you, your parents or grandparents ever send or receive a postcard from Sweden before the 1970s? If so, that postcard might very well have been produced by the Almquist & Cöster Company; one of the major postcard companies in Sweden, founded in the 1920s by the photographer Salfon Almquist and the technician Rudolph Cöster and operative until 1968.

The Swedish National Heritage Board holds in its archives a large collection of photo postcards by Almquist & Cöster, dating from the 1910s (some are from an earlier business owned by Salfon Almquist) until the late 1960s. The format is mostly clichés of glass or film with text for printing, or original printed postcards, many of them tinted. Starting today, we will upload a choice of them to share with you in a new picture set on Flickr Commons called ”Almquist and Cöster Postcards”.

We will show you ski resorts, beach life and camping grounds, an old folk’s home in Oskarström, a bus station in Umeå, miners at work in Kiruna, a car pulled by oxen in 1917, and many other sights from north to south in Sweden, with Swedes in different environments, at leisure or at various occupations. Several photographers were connected to the company. Still, many of the postcards don’t give the name of the photographer.

Our participation on The Commons on Flickr has allowed so many people from all over the world to view, use and interact on the images we show as samples from our collections. So far, we have created 22 sets with different kinds of images from Sweden and other European countries and lately also with photos of old drawings, watercolours and prints. Helpful and clever members of the Flickr community have in comments provided new and useful information to 10 % of the images (which we have added to the information in our photo database online, Kulturmiljöbild). It’s always very encouraging to read all the kind and cheerful approval of the images and to view the many comparative photographs that have been posted.

A big ‘Thank You’ to all you viewers and Flickr members who have taken your time to view and interact on our photostream on Flickr Commons since the start in March 2009! We are so pleased to share the Swedish cultural heritage with you. :)

Crossing between Götgatan and Ringvägen streets at Skanstull in the southern part of Stockholm city. Photo: Fredrik Bruno, 1943Identified by a Flickr community member: The church of St-Jean in Fribourg, at Planche-Supérieure, Fribourg, Switzerland. Photo: Berit Wallenberg, 1936

The Library of the Swedish National Heritage Board (Vitterhetsakademiens bibliotek) and the Board’s public archives hold thousands of drawings, watercolours and prints, some dated back to the 18th century, or even older. Some of these images have been photographed over the years to be displayed in the Board’s photo database online Kulturmiljöbild, and a choice of these will be presented on Flickr Commons, starting today.

The set will include watercolours and coloured prints from the end of the 18th century, showing folkloristic scenes and environments from different parts of Sweden. They are created by the Swedish painters and graphic artists Elias Martin (1739-1818), his brother Johan Fredrik Martin, and others. These images are from the Library’s Rosenhane Collection, derived from the collector Schering Rosenhane (1754-1812).

From the Rosenhane Collection will also appear some images illustrating a naval battle in 1789, south of the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. They are made by the graphic artist Johan Petter Cumelin (1764-1820).

Inside of Visby city wall with the northern city gate (Norderport) and the ”Coining House”. Pencil-drawing by Per Arvid Säve, from 1850. Photo: Lars Kennerstedt

The archives of the Swedish National Heritage Board will contribute to the set with drawings and watercolours showing medieval ruins and town scenes from Visby (and Hörsne parish) on the island of Gotland on the Swedish east coast. They are from the Collection of drawings, watercolours and prints, and from the Collection of P. A. Säve. They were created during the first half of the 19th century by the architect Jacob Wilhelm Gerss, the land surveyor Lars Cedergren and the scholar Per Arvid Säve.

Some photos of drawings showing a Danish siege in 1502 of the Swedish fortresses of Old Älvsborg and Öresten will also be part of the set. The drawings are made by the German soldier of fortune Paul Dolnstein, who participated in the Danish army at the siege. The original drawings are probably kept in the State Archives of Weimar in Germany.

We hope you’ll enjoy this historical image material – welcome to view and share it on Flickr Commons!